


Echoes, they fade away

by cecilantro



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21691048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilantro/pseuds/cecilantro
Summary: Caleb questions his loyalty in his story about his scars. Essek just wants to help.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 7
Kudos: 164





	Echoes, they fade away

“Essek,” Caleb says in a voice husked by hours without sleep, blood still threatening to seep at the edge of his wounds. It is early morning in Rosonha, and earlier in Rexxentrum, where Caleb had chanced himself on a teleportation circle whilst his friends slumbered semi-peacefully, but at least they slumbered.

Essek rubs his eyes with the back of a hand, unsure of the bedraggled vision before him,

“How, pray tell, did you find where I lived?”

Caleb looks over his shoulder at the retreating back of the guard he’d half-bribed, half-begged for Essek’s homestead,

“I needed you.”

That seems to sober Essek up quickly. He studies Caleb, a once-over that is as perfunctory as it is quick, and it takes a fair fine thirty seconds before he stands aside and gestures for Caleb to enter.

“Let’s have some tea.” He says, with a voice as soft as the touch to a wounded animal, a pointed look at a nearby maid sends them scurrying to fulfill the Shadowhand’s promise to this world-weary hero to the Dynasty. So weary, in fact, that Essek feels the need to offer an arm of support to Caleb as they pad through the rather soberly lavish halls of his home. The decor is rich, but in an artful way, Caleb notes- it doesn’t display wealth for the sake of wealth, but rather, wealth for the sake of style and taste. Which seems befitting of Essek’s nature, really; he doesn’t seem to be one for useless frills and long-winded words.

They sit in Essek’s kitchen.

Essek pulls out a chair for Caleb to sit in, and goes to move around the table across from him but finds his wrist caught gingerly, as though Caleb is afraid one of them may burn the other.

“Sit beside me?” he asks- begs, he begs, there is no other word for the look in his eyes, and Essek cannot turn down a beggar. He pulls a seat beside Caleb and pulls the pot closer when his maid sets the tea on the table.

“That will be all, thank you. Leave us, please.” He dismisses his staff, who do duly as they are told. A flick of the wrist and a brief incantation ensures they will not listen in on this conversation, which begins with a simple question,

“Caleb,” Essek says gently, “Are you okay?”

It is as though a dam bursts behind the mage’s barriers as he breaks into tears, but past the initial choke of sobs, he keeps his voice at a warbling stability,

“I needed you,” Says Caleb, “I  _ need _ you- my loyalties, Essek, I don’t know where they are any more and you- you are the only one here I can say that I trust. You have earned that from us, from me- we trust you.  _ I trust you, _ and I need you to- to trust me with… information, I need to know who I am loyal to.”

“Caleb,” Essek frowns, wants to chide but instead takes the path to soothe, “Breathe.”

Caleb does, with Essek, breathe. They calm him down. They slow his words. And in that lapse of judgement comes a pouring of Caleb’s history with Trent, he hikes his sleeves up to display his scars and tell Essek exactly what the Volstrekers were told to do, about his parents, about the beatings, and the mind manipulation, and the embedded crystals in his arms and begging, screaming for them to be taken out.

“This,” he gestures to his arms, “Is what the Empire did to me. It is my  _ home, _ it is where I grew up, it is where many people I love live… but I do not know that I can be loyal to an empire that will continue to do this to children. And the same is said of the dynasty. I will stop wars, I will do as I am asked and what I owe- but I will not swear my loyalty to a legion that turns out child soldiers. So, Essek, I- I need you. I need you to tell me.”

Caleb looks up to meet Essek’s eyes, still holding sobs in his throat,

“Who should I be loyal to?”

Essek is silent a moment, then reaches out to place a hand tentatively over Caleb’s,

“Yourself,” he answers, “And your family.”

“I killed my family,” Caleb tries back with a bite behind his words, but Essek shushes him and shakes his head,

“Family is stronger than blood. Your found family, your friends- protect them, above all else. Above the Empire. Above my Dynasty. Above me.”

“You are one of us.” Caleb shifts to lay his other hand over Essek’s in a hand sandwich, “If I am loyal to my family, I am to you.”

“No,” Essek shakes his head again, “My loyalty is with the Dynasty, with my Queen. And also with you, but we are separate. We may intersect, occasionally, and Luxon forbid that we ever come to odds with one another, but that… is okay. We do not have to be aligned all of the time. I am with you.”

“I am with you,” Caleb echoes, squeezing Essek’s hand. Essek smiles at him,

“For what it is worth, I am unaware of any sort of… experiments,” he nods toward Caleb’s scars, “Such as these. That is not to say they don’t exist. I am not trusted with everything, but then so I wonder, is your king?”

“I would hope not.” Caleb replies quietly, and for a moment in the kitchen there is quiet, the steam of their mugs rising in gentle spirals.

And in that moment, Caleb chooses to be brave. Or stupid. 

They are the same thing.

He leans in to Essek, hesitant, giving the drow the chance to reject him. He leaves it seconds. He waits. Like a thread held mid-air.

Essek does not reject him.

Essek closes the gap to kiss him, just once, just gently, as though it were merely an echo of another timeline tingling on their lips as they draw apart.

“Come home again soon.” Essek tells Caleb, knowing already the sigils passing through the other wizard’s head. Caleb smiles at him, exhausted, blood-stricken, but relieved.

“ _ Ja, _ ” he says, sketching the symbols out with a hand in the air, “I will.”

And then he is gone, and Essek’s kitchen is left empty with just the last breeze of Caleb brushing through and leaving the Shadowhand wishing, waiting, wanting for more of the Empire.


End file.
